I shall speak to several amendments—to Amendment 170, on a capacity plan, and to Amendment 134B, on planning. I declare my interest as a former Ofsted chief inspector, where I spoke repeatedly over seven years about the issues with sufficiency in many parts of the country, and the urgency of taking …
My Lords, I would like to speak to Amendments 119 to 124 very briefly. We have touched on some very important points, and there is something that still needs to be crystallised. As others have said, these are some of the most troubled children in the system. They are also the ones whose care is prob…
My Lords, I support Amendments 134, 143 and 178. Fostering is critical to the provision of good care for all children who need it, and it is a really tough job.
In Committee so far, not very much has been said about the very large proportion of looked-after children who have significant special nee…
My Lords, I speak to oppose Amendment 69AB, well-intentioned though it clearly is. I have several levels of concerns about the imposition of yet another duty. I believe that the expectations for looked-after children are generally well understood—whether they are actually carried out in practice is …
My Lords, for several reasons I support Amendment 37 from my noble friend Lady Barran. She and others have spoken about the enormous amount of change being imposed on the sector, both to current structures and prospectively with local government reorganisation and with many processes through these r…
My Lords, Amendment 69 would make provision for a common open data standard for those with responsibilities for individual children. I will start with a couple of wider comments. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, as chief inspector at Ofsted, I reported each year, for many years, on the conce…
My Lords, I support the amendments proposed by my noble friend Lady Barran. These proposals are clearly well intentioned but there are reasons why this has not been done before, and her desire to explore how these amendments are intended to work is absolutely right.
Just to put it in context, in a …
My Lords, I will speak very briefly and will save most of what I want to say for the specific amendments. I listened to the entire Second Reading debate below the Bar, but at that point I was not able to speak in this House.
I support my noble friend Lady Barran, who has rightly drawn attention to …
My Lords, it is a huge privilege to follow my noble friend Lady Spielman after her exceptionally thoughtful, insightful speech to the House, indicating very clearly the experience she will bring.
It is no surprise that somebody obviously very bright who did a mathematics degree at Cambridge Univers…